Film Review – Predators

We’ve been waiting twenty years for a decent damned Predator movie now. TWENTY YEARS. In that time, we’ve only had novels and comics of debateabe quality and those Alien vs. Predator movies that sucked so hard it’s amazing they didn’t open a singularity event. You would think that someone would have gone back to the original, learned what worked and made a proper sequel within the span of two decades, but that’s how long it took until Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal gave us Predators.

So, are the double-R superstar and the director named after a fearsome X-Men robo-villain able to give us something worthy of the double decade waiting period? Hells to the yeah, and then some.

The movie throws us into the action immediately. Adrien Brody is falling out of the sky with some sort of alien parachute strapped to his chest and he soon hits land only to find himself in the company of a couple other badasses; an Israeli sniper chick, a death row inmate, an African death-squad commando, a Mexican cartel enforcer, a Russian military heavy-hitter, a yakuza hitman and some scrawny doctor played by Topher Grace whose purpose is seemingly to allow for some fish out of water humor that does well to establish a tone that works in a way to let the film not take itself too seriously.

I think that’s what I loved about Predators the most; the return of the gallows humor dripping with machesmo. Walton Goggins’ prisoner character especially shines in the fact that he’s total scum but we laugh at nearly everything he says. His performance was effortless.

We really get some standout character work from the crew here. Brody is believable as a hardcase, which is in and of itself an unbelieveable fact. Braga has the cold military chick thing down without playing up the tough-chick persona in the way that someone like Michelle Rodriguez probably would have. Walton Goggins was just great and Topher Grace was able to parlay his usual mannerisms into something that worked. The only people that didn’t really hit their marks were the ones defined by their ethnicities. Danny Trejo was just Danny Trejo. The Russian was Russian and the African was African. That’s about all the depth they have. The Yakuza hitman escaped this pitfall by not having much in the way of dialogue and having a pretty badass confrontation with a Predator that had the whole audience cheering.

If you’re a Predator fan, you’ve been waiting for this. If you’re not a Predator fan, this one isn’t going to change your mind, but you’re better off seeing this than garbage like The Last Airbender.

And now, because I’m shallow, pictures of Alice Braga, who is quite attractive when not covered in filth.